For the side uninterested in stopping the slaughter, please steal these ideas
Here are some things you could do.
If it takes good guys with guns to stop bad guys with guns, go find yourself some good guys with guns.
Put snipers on the rooftops of every school, two uniforms and a metal detector at every entrance, more uniforms in the hallways and arm them with the same weapons of war killers have been bringing into schools.
Sure, we can’t do anything about disarming would-be killers before they decide it’s a good day to kill children, but now you’ve got eyes on the would-be killer before they hit the building, and if he or she can avoid the snipers, there’s guards at the doors, and if he or she can get past them, they’re outnumbered once inside.
Do that at every single school, though at an astronomically exorbitant cost, school shootings would be reduced to firing into the school from a distance, which could still happen, but think of the pleasure you’re robbing the would-be killer from enjoying.
They can no longer see the outcome of their work. Much more must be put into the task, casing the joint for angles the snipers can’t spot. The would-be killer must be fine with pulling the trigger and walking away, not knowing if they’ve killed and with less chance of being killed by the cop they want to be killed by.
It’s a lot of work, without the adrenaline rush of knowing they’ve hit their targets, with no guarantee of the desired outcome, and what would-be killer wants to go through that?
So if the “well regulated Militia” mentioned in the Second Amendment can still be a single person carrying an unregulated weapon of war and there’s nothing to be done about it because the Second Amendment says so, go get your snipers, your metal detectors, your army at the door and in the hallways and, voila, you’ve stopped maybe every school shooting before they’ve been imagined.
Too expensive?
Funerals are expensive.
Wrongful death suits are expensive.
Life has value.
Children’s lives have more value.
Or, forget all that, because it’s unnecessary, because school shootings are not about guns, not about the impulse to pull a trigger that sends instantaneous killing metal into children’s bodies by would-be killers that, forced to go with a rock, knife, crowbar or bow and arrow, probably wouldn’t make the effort in the first place.
Forget about that because it’s about mental health, not weaponry.
Making the answer simple.
You don’t need universal background checks. You don’t need waiting periods forcing would-be killers to maintain their I-must-kill-children wishes for an additional 48 to 72 hours. You don’t need a registry or safe storage laws. You don’t even need an assault weapons ban.
All you must do is make any individual who wants to purchase, inherit, be gifted or come into the possession of an assault weapon by any means have their readiness to possess such weaponry signed off upon by a mental health professional, a signing off that must recur, say, every year or two.
Because if we’re serious about savings kids lives, and it’s about mental health, the path is so obvious.
The professional who signs off must see the would-be possessor in person two or three times before signing off and, perhaps, be trained specifically for the purpose of signing off responsibly.
Yes, you can be approved for your pot or dick pills for $5 and a couple of texts with a doc you’ve never seen, but we’re trying to stop the slaughter of children, so that’s what we’re going to do. And the whole thing being a mental health issue, just ask so many of your meme-positing Facebook friends, there can be no loopholes nor workarounds.
Too expensive?
Funerals are expensive.
Wrongful death suits are expensive.
Life has value.
Children’s lives have more value.
Here’s the thing.
As depressing as that first solution is, I’m down with it.
My liberal mind, heart and philosophy hates it because there are so many better, less expensive ways to stop the slaughter, but if we’re here to keep children from being shot dead in their classrooms and the best legislative solutions simply aren’t available, give me the snipers, the metal detectors, the army at the door and in the hallways, because I’m here to stop the slaughter.
And though the second solution may do nothing about assault weapons already possessed, nor stop an individual who’s never had a psychotic break until deciding kids must be killed, I’m all about that one, too.
The folks who really want AR-15s in their firearm collection, or to shoot up old cars in a field, or whatever the hell else law abiding sane folk do with guns bereft of self-defense or hunting use, can still get them for their own purposes if they want them badly enough. And though unlikely to be as profoundly effective as the first solution, bring it on, anyway, and many, many children who would have died will not die.
Yet you know who’s not putting those solutions forward, nor any like them, to stop the slaughter, though they’ll tell you it takes good guys with guns to stop bad guys with guns or that it’s not about guns, anyway, but about mental health instead?
Republicans.
Period.
Here on the left, we stipulate to mental health playing a role, so we’re for the red flag laws our state’s already shot down. But we also insist mass killings wouldn’t happen remotely as often if there were universal background checks, waiting periods, an assault-weapons ban or the registration and regulation of them and other quite commonsense steps. And we insist it because we actually believe it, figuratively dying to stop literal dying.
But over there on the right, the thoughts-and-prayers caucus (Republicans), the good-guy-with-a-gun caucus (Republicans) and the it’s-all-about-mental-health caucus (Republicans), are still offering zero solutions consistent with their tired disingenuous rhetoric.
Instead, they continue taking the NRA’s money, continue to spout gun lobby talking points that helped them win their primary and do nothing — NOTHING!! — to attempt to slow the slaughter.
Previously, I’ve championed the independence of a few Republicans in our state.
Attorney general Gentler Drummond for using his office to take a righteous and legal, not political, stand against corruption.
Labor commissioner Leslie Osborn for calling out her party’s social policy silliness.
State rep Mark McBride for having no patience with the idiocy and stupidity of the embarrassment that is Ryan Walters.
But will they speak up or help find a solution to this? Will they take on their own party and its donors to lessen the likelihood of mass shootings in Oklahoma, or maybe just swear off the gun lobby until the gun lobby quits being fine with dead children?
There it is.
That’s the column.
Stop if you want.
Or remain for a self-indulgent close, because since Nashville happened I’ve been thinking.
Over the presidencies of Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush again until 9-11, things were kind of all right.
There were problems and we fought over them, but both sides wanted to be in the solution business; utter disingenuousness was not prevalent; the other side, though misguided and wrong, was not evil. Discourse was combative but reasonably civil, making room for faith and hope.
Now?
Now, opening day of the baseball season gives me hope, but for what I can’t imagine and will be gone tomorrow.
Wednesday, I watched U2 perform “Bad” at Live Aid again, where Bono left the stage, rescued some fans and danced with one of them out of site of his bandmates, who had no idea what was happening as they played on, back when it felt like music could save the world but even if it couldn’t just feeling like it might was worth it.
Tears in my eyes.
For the glory of that moment first felt watching it live July 13, 1985, and in mourning for Nashville, the unending line of slaughter that preceded it, and the political party content to do nothing about it, trading on children’s lives to continue being elected.
Not fair?
Offer a solution.
It doesn’t have to be the best one.
I just gave you two.